Considering Self-Ban and Self-Ban Discussion

[Menalque]

Hi. I wanted to make this thread for two reasons, both related to myself but one of which is very narrowly focused on me and the other dealing with a more general discussion to be had:

(1) I'm considering self-banning. This would be need to be for a year due to site policy (see point 2). I've found a lot of my recent games to be deeply unenjoyable experiences, for a variety of reasons within the games themselves but which can probably be best traced in origin to personal factors such as getting overly emotionally involved in games.

I initially figured this was happening due to burnout or playing too many games in a row (as it wasn't so much of an issue when I first joined the site), but I still struggle with actually going on hiatus or taking a meaningful break. Even when I've tried to, I've often ended up /inning stuff on a secret alt if it's looked interesting or the PL has been good. If anyone has advice on how to stay active on site while resisting the urge to play, that would be welcomed, because I like the majority of the community here and would prefer not to be totally cut off. Alternatively, if people have any concrete advice – I'm aware threads like this have existed in the past, I've generally found the advice quite wishy-washy e.g. "try to enjoy playing scum more"; "remember it's just a game" – on how to play in a more detached way I would also be grateful for that.

(2) I wanted to have a discussion of how self-bans work and why they're as restrictive as they are. It's still official policy that self-bans may only be received for a minimum of a year and that they must be sitewide. I'm not sure why this is, and I'm curious if mods or players can weigh in on why they think this is better than being able to receive self-bans for shorter periods/in a more focused way (e.g. requesting a 6 month self-ban from playing in mafia games). Is the idea that there would be a huge upsurge in people requesting self-bans? Or that it would be significantly more work for the mods? Or that it cheapens the concept of self-banning as a Very Serious Endeavour. None of these really seem true to me, but I might be missing something. If, on the other hand, I'm not, then I hope that perhaps people voicing support here for a more flexible approach to self-bans might lead to a change in moderation policy

Thanks.

[MURDERCAT]

I put a countdown in my sig a few months ago and didn't play until that was up, could be worth a try.

[Menalque]

I don't see how it can hurt, thank you MC.

[Datisi]

If anyone has advice on how to stay active on site while resisting the urge to play, that would be welcomed, because I like the majority of the community here and would prefer not to be totally cut off.

don't know if this will be helpful for you, but during my last mafia hiatus (late april to early june this year), i found it helpful to find something else to do - i got a ps1 emulator and played though some old games. i'm a person who at any time has to be ~doing something~, and usually mafia is that something for me, so for a while i swapped it for something else. obviously this still heavily relies on successful self-restraint... maybe get a friend to yell at you when you get the urge to /in into something? that helped me in a few moments of weakness.

also ego - i wanna hear advice on how to get less emotionally invested in this stupid game.

[Something_Smart]

Might as well throw my $0.02 into the ring.

I think the main reason that I don't get emotionally invested in games is because I mostly define success or failure as personal-- i.e., did I contribute a satisfactory amount toward my team's wincon? If so, I call that a win-- I "did my job", you could say. This applies moreso as town; as scum, my scumgame is so weak and inconsistent that it's mostly just trying to do a little better than I did last time, or fool a few more people for a bit longer.

I think you can derive advice from this that's more concrete than "stop worrying about winning or losing"-- my suggestion would be, at the start of a game, set goals for yourself. As town, aim to be townread and/or have good reads; as scum, aim to survive to a certain day, or fool a certain number of people.

Of course I can't guarantee that you can do this in any meaningful way. It could just be that you two see the game fundamentally differently from me. But it's food for thought, at least.

Given that everyone who posted here is much better at mafia than me, it's likely that this method either doesn't work for stronger players or actively holds you back from becoming stronger. Not sure which it is (or maybe both), but it seems like a trade-in that's probably worth it.

[MURDERCAT]

I think of it the same way S_S

[Fluminator]

I signed up for a self ban at least 3 times now and I never followed through. Maybe I should try again soon because it's getting cringey

[Ythan]

I have to imagine that a self imposed ban could be appealed extremely easily, perhaps unless the user had asked not to allow such beforehand. Am I right or wrong?

[Infinity 324]

I don't really have concrete advice for you, but good luck and I hope you're able to successfully avoid mafia and enjoy it when/if you start playing again.

[Fluminator]

I have to imagine that a self imposed ban could be appealed extremely easily, perhaps unless the user had asked not to allow such beforehand. Am I right or wrong?

That defeats the purpose

[Isis]

Self-bans are unappealable for a minimum of one year.

[AniX]

I believe self-bans are structured the way they are to explicitly discourage self-ban.

[Flubbernugget]

what's the argument against them?

[AniX]

I believe it is a public policy decision to avoid turning the mods into babysitters who need to juggle self-bans of varying lengths and domains.

[Cheery Dog]

I think I managed to stop playing mafia through joining a LSG and having those become my focus on the site.
And avoiding clicking into the queue threads. If you don't see the player list, you can't join because of it. Full retirement then happens when they all drop out of view. If you want to be more discussion focused, navigate the site through "Active Topics", it will hide all mafia subforums and the mishmash subforum.

[Isis]

A long long time ago we've had users request self bans then request their self ban be lifted. That defeats the purpose and is an inappropriate tax on mod resources. Moderators usually do things users can't do for themselves. Every user can refrain from using the forums or any section of it themselves.

There is a super clear hard minimum now.
There has to be a hard minimum. Self bans that are lifted when the user wants them lifted are the same as an individual resolution, except with moderator's tedium added.

The most we could do is change the minimum. I think the thinking is that six months would result in lots of users using that length back to back or almost back to back so neither the site mods or users gain much. But maybe that's poor guess on demand.

I can't remember why it's sitewide only, I could come up with reasons to argue that policy with little effort but I don't remember which one was most applicable or one I didn't contemplate. I guess I can say that as a mafia listmod I'm not instinctively excited about a player getting self banned from the discussion forums and then playing mafia. I would worry they player would view their opponents as less human and have a detached adversarial experience playing with the community.

[Cheetory6]

When I wanted a break that was hard to get around (granted I was considering never coming back) I scrambled my passwords and changed my email to something I couldn't access and then asked for a reset when I ended up wanting to come back.
Still probably kind of annoying for moderators but maybe less so than asking for a ban?

[Isis]

I feel like I have to categorically oppose something that weakens your account security (it is easier for someone to successfully impersonate you over a break than it is for someone to crack a strong four thousand years of guesses password on your email or account)
The comparative administrative efforts between those two becomes irrelevant

[Dunnstral]

This feels like a discussion of addiction and lack of self-control. I agree with the current hard-line stance on self bans and think it adds something. I am not convinced that 1 year minimum adds something. Also, I don't think this is something that should be discouraged.

[Cheetory6]

(it is easier for someone to successfully impersonate you over a break than it is for someone to crack a strong four thousand years of guesses password on your email or account)

I had to confirm my identity over discord when I wanted to reactivate (but yeah maybe that is some extra overhead for mods to have to deal with that's kind of annoying so fair enough on that front). I just don't really understand how someone could functionally impersonate you without having access to the email? Are they going to guess that you've done this and won't check your email?

Like this just seems like an imagined problem that would almost certainly never actually happen?

[Nexus]

I just don't really understand how someone could functionally impersonate you without having access to the email

Orly? We had someone impersonate multiple other oldies because they gained access to their email.

[Ythan]

1 lol that
2 I may be misunderstanding you Nexus but it seems like he said it's unlikely without the email and you're saying that happened but with the email.

[Something_Smart]

I thought zakk impersonated another user with their permission.

Regardless, with the advent of discord, it seems unlikely that locking yourself out of your account and then asking for a reset is going to be dangerous.

[Cheetory6]

if someone gained access to my current email associated with this account while I had left the site I would probably also not notice it too.

maybe that's also irresponsible I guess, but I'm guessing a large number of users who registered accounts on the site X number of years ago probably used emails that they don't even look at anymore and uniquely wringing your hands about someone scrambling their stuff over a six month period without telling anyone is what seems like worrying about an incredibly unlikely occurrence, not that it could ever functionally happen to any account in existence.

[chamber]

In the specific case of cheetory, he's also met like 40 scummers irl. Faking that for any period of time seems nearly impossible.